Page 98 of A Requiem of Fire and Ice

I twitch a smile. “You really know how to ruin a moment with your vulgarity, don’t you?”

Pandora hops to my side, beaming a smile as she says, “I try.”

Senri hands me antiseptic wipes. Blood and fleshy brains strip away from my hands with every wipe, and when I’m done, we stop by a two-sided mirror overlooking Kate Grant. Pandora takes a breath, causing me to eye her and her widened, gobsmacked expression.

“What?” I say.

“This is what Kate looks like now?” she says. “I didn’t know how much she has…She was at my home in Oceanview Harbour recently. I saw her enter my apartment block the day before I went to the Flesh. Why?”

I eye Senri, who’s absorbing all of this, and wonder if he’s putting the pieces together with the rumours about an ice elemny, and now I’m here, claiming I have a partner. For any air elemny, the gears must be ticking inside his mind, and he’s connecting the dots.

“Say anything, and you die,” I say under my breath to Senri.

“Then I will keep my thoughts to myself,” he replies.

I may have to get Alad to create a contract with him, but my threat may be enough to keep him quiet.

Rolling my eyes away from Senri, I stare at Kate. She looks irritable, with a curled lip, a frustrated scowl, and a twitching shoulder as she glares at the table. Her hands, chained to the table, grip together until her fingertips redden. Agitation works through her. I thought she would have more fear, but no inkling of it crosses her face.

“She looks like a fucking addict,” Pandora says, voicing my thoughts.

I turn to Senri and ask, “Has she always been like this?”

“No. Not until I told her you were coming to question her.”

I fold my arms across my chest and grimace. “What do you want me to ask, Pandora?”

“Why was she looking into the…” She eyes Senri, but he stares vacantly at Kate. “Ask her about the firearms she was investigating, as well as whether she knew about, um…my sister’s infidelities.”

Interesting. Everyone knows about Typha fucking Emmerton and sending it around, not only to gloat in the academy but also to Walkyer himself. Yet, if Kate knew earlier than we did, was she the one who told King Ragan? Did she push him to send us to slaughter them so suddenly?

Fascinating.

I enter the room. Kate rises, her movements robotic, as she raises her head to look at me. Our relationship has been on the fence since I got to know her, but what solidified it was when she wanted to enter into a sexual contract with me, and I declined. Thus, she went to King Ragan and tried to butter him up. I’m unsure if it worked because I’ve never seen them cosy together—only the sex workers. But now I’m not so sure about that.

“Kate,” I say after leaning against the mirror that Senri and Pandora watch from. “What brings you to the Kingdom of Cloud? It’s been some time since we last saw you after you fled the castle following the reckoning of the Kingdom of Crystal.”

“I have business here.”

I glare at her. “Is it the same business you had in Oceanview Harbour?”

Her eyes widen. A slight movement that a good deal wouldn’t have picked up on. Then Kate furrows her brows and looks at me with utter oblivion to cover her accidental leak of emotions. It’s stupid, and her reaction bothers me. She still tries to act dumb after we both know I can fucking see through her shit.

“Why did you go to her apartment?” I tilt my head to the side and narrow my eyes. “Do you also remember anything about wanting to know about firearms? Or maybe explicit videos of Pandora’s sister and…”

Kate turns her attention to the double-sided mirror. “She’s here, isn’t she?”

I grit my teeth. “You’re talking to me, and I fucking want to know why you’re so interested in her now. The way your eyes lit up suggests you know her.”

“I don’t know her, but I want her.”

“The fuck?” I hear Pandora from the other side, causing me to huff a breathy laugh.

“Why?” I say.

Kate’s eyes gleam in the fluorescent light as she says, “Do you know about the crystal hearts?”

“No. But enlighten me.”